


It's Super Effective!

by canistakahari



Series: gamer bones [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Crack, Humor, M/M, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones is a gamer. Jim is confused by this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Super Effective!

**Author's Note:**

> This is [affectingly’s](http://archiveofourown.org/users/affectingly/profile) fault, because she encouraged my madness. All the games referenced here are my own personal oeuvre of awesome shit I grew up playing, and still play now (YES, INCLUDING POKÉMON, SHUT UP). You should all go out right now and play Portal and Half Life 2. Italicized text at the beginning and end is from Victims of Science’s "The Device Has Been Modified", which will demonstrate just how awesome Portal is if you were waffling. Thanks to [ayalesca](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ayalesca/profile) for help with some of the swearing, haha.
> 
> Needless to say, this is candy-coated and crack-filled. Also, stupid. I can’t stress that enough.

***

_Hello, and welcome to the enrichment centre  
your specimen has been processed   
and we are now ready to begin the test proper_  


  
  
Sometime around the middle of November, Jim starts to give serious and in-depth thought to the sheer volume of schoolwork the medical track students seem to receive.   
  
What this actually means is that the thought briefly crosses his mind during his weekly piloting sim, much like a squirrel might bolt in terror across a freeway. Because he’s in the middle of a no-longer-so-controlled-dive when it hits him, he narrowly avoids pile-driving straight into a cliff-face while his co-pilot abruptly turns chalk white and stays utterly silent beyond the single kitten-ish squeak he utters when Jim cries “HOT DAMN!” and veers sharply left. He’s not too concerned about failing the sim, but he’s desperate to avoid the sim’s gleefully spiteful  _you just died horribly and on fire, care to restart because you suck, y/n?_  message, more than anything else.   
  
He’s basing his homework assumptions purely on what he has observed recently of Bones, who might as well go ahead and get a PADD surgically implanted in his body, because by this point in the blushing bloom of their epic bromance, Jim is almost 100% convinced he even takes one with him when he goes into the bathroom so that he won’t miss out on a single moment of time in which he could feasibly study.  
  
Jim does his fair share of work—it’s actually the most work he’s ever done in his life, and he wants to throw himself down in the middle of the Academy library sometimes and weep joyous tears for how gloriously challenging everything is. After a lifetime of lying prone on his desk in samey classrooms with his forehead steadily thumping a funeral dirge into the synthetic wood, having work that isn’t  _balls easy_ is like getting daily blowjobs beamed directly to his brain.   
  
No matter how much work he does, though, he still seems to have more spare time than Bones, who has to be crow-barred out of their dorm room with a carefully-choreographed routine of finely-balanced wheedling and vague threats.   
  
Bones is a genius in his own right.   
  
He’s got a back-arsenal of badass skills, like an old-timey knowledge of ass-backwards medical practices that he likes to whip out when Jim gets hurt in some outrageous way, as if it’ll discourage him from, say, scaling the wall of the medical building just for the single perfect moment of distilled pleasure found in making Bones jump three feet in the air when he looks out the two-story window and sees Jim there, waving like a mental patient, before inevitably losing his balance.   
  
“Jim,” Bones says, after a pretty spectacular paint-ball gun mishap that involved Jim’s face, blowback, and a gushing head-wound that spurted in time with Jim’s pulse, much to Jim’s glee and Bones’s explosive rage. He’s swabbing angrily at Jim’s face with an antibacterial wipe and Jim tries not to flinch in an especially emasculating way. “Do you know what doctors used to do to close wounds?”  
  
“What, Bones?” says Jim cheerfully. They have a script. Jim loves it. He’s never had a script with anyone before.   
  
The vein in Bones’s forehead twitches alarmingly. “They used to take a needle, and thread, and physically  _stitch the skin back together_  like a torn shirt. Sometimes without anaesthetic.” He waves the dermal regenerator in Jim’s face wildly. “They didn’t have magical voodoo gadgets to do it for ‘em.”  
  
“Voodoo gadgets,” parrots Jim, obediently.   
  
Bones gives him a suspicious, frowny-faced glare, and waits for Jim to slip up and let out all the laughter he’s bottling up and saving for when he can get home and lock himself safely in the bathroom.   
  
“Basically,” he continues, when he’s decided that while Jim is mocking him, he can handle that because he’s got a hypospray in his hand, “if you lived, oh, two hundred years ago, you’d have been dead before the age of whenever you became the rebellious teenage moron I know you must’ve been. Do you know what septic shock is?”  
  
“I’m confident you’re going to tell me,” says Jim, smothering a grin.   
  
“Damn right I am,” grumbles Bones, grimly, and brandishes the hypo in Jim’s face.  
  
It’s from Bones that Jim learns about hands-on surgeries, the evils of substance abuse, the many ways you can die from not washing your hands properly, the many ways you can die from your  _doctor_  not washing his or her hands properly, why cleaning vegetables is not only necessary but critical to the survival of the human race, and the horrors of 20th century needles. When Bones opens his mouth, Jim always sits up eagerly, ready for whatever brand new nugget of deranged wisdom will come screaming out in fear.   
  
The crux of it is, Bones is kind of hella smart.   
  
Which doesn’t explain the excessive amounts of studying he seems to engage in— _willingly!_ —particularly when it’s not even close to exams, and there is drinking and partying and watching old movies at the outdoor theatre and eating takeout and going bungee jumping off the golden gate bridge and then getting arrested afterward to do instead.  
  
When Jim closes his eyes and conjures images of friends and family, he usually pictures them doing the things that they like best, or whatever Jim associates with them most strongly. He usually sees his mother doing those ridiculously difficult crosswords that get printed for kicks in the back of her engineering journals, or sometimes playing electric violin, which she’s particularly rocktastic at.  
  
Bones is forever immortalized in Jim’s brain with a PADD in his hand and a scowl on his face. Sometimes he’s muttering to himself.   
  
The other thing he’s noticed about Bones is that he holds a PADD like he would a book, or a communicator—cradled in his fingers with his thumbs poised and reading for typing.   
  
Bones is scarily adept at texting; considering his standard loathing of most (if not all) technology, this skill is strangely incongruous.   
  
The first time Jim sent him a text, the reply was instantaneous. He’d been putting his communicator back into his pocket after sending Bones a sensitively-poetic description of his instructor’s hairpiece and the excellent sex it was having with his head when the device had alerted him to the arrival of a new message via the harmonious strains of  _For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)_. The ring-tone was newly installed just for Bones’s incoming comm calls and messages. When Jim checked the comm, fully expecting a message accidentally sent before it was completed, he instead found a paragraph response, perfectly punctuated, nary a typo in sight.   
  
Bones with a PADD is like some sort of speed-demon crack-addict; he types furiously, curses like a Klingon mercenary, and, in the process, reveals the skill he has honed the most thoroughly out of his entire impressive back-catalogue of awesome:  
  
 _The ability to ignore Jim._  
  
He’s disappointingly good at it.   
  
It’s a good thing Jim is a patient, persistent bastard.   
  


oOo

  
  
It takes Jim a pathetic amount of time to realize that Bones isn’t actually spending every moment in which he’s holding a PADD studying.   
  
Neither Jim nor Bones is particular neat or organized; the fact that they were assigned a room together means their living space is, in fact, an artistic layering of all the shit they own and probably some stuff they don’t, padded with clothing both clean and in various states of decay, then cemented with truly laughable attempts to occasionally move things to their appropriate places.   
  
Bones is sporting a PADD as an artificial arm again, and making his way from the kitchen to the section of floor that is ostensibly his bedroom, picking his way carefully through the deluge of utter crap, when he pauses, glances down at his feet in gentle confusion, and then drop-kicks a pair of Jim’s boxers across the room.  
  
“That,” says Jim, from his position as Sherpa on top of the mountain that might be his bed, “Was pretty impressive.”  
  
“I thought we agreed no underwear in the open,” mumbles Bones accusingly, immediately engrossed again in whatever the Jesus fucking tap-dancing Christ he’s got in that stupid piece of glass and plastic and silicon.   
  
“My bad,” replies Jim. He watches Bones sit down on his bed after two tries at finding the edge, eyes glued to the screen, barely aware of his surroundings, and tries to puzzle him out. Whenever Jim attempts to peek over his shoulder, Bones usually thrusts up said shoulder and belts him in the face, which is startling enough that Jim has started flinching in a warily conditioned way whenever Bones shrugs.   
  
Bones mutters something that sounds like, “Oh, no you  _don’t_.” His shoulders are up around his ears, collapsing forward into a tense, spectacular hunch. The eyebrow jet squadron scrambles against some unseeable threat, gathering into a tight v-formation, apparently ready for attack. If his forehead furrows any more deeply, his face is totally gonna get stuck that way.   
  
“Did someone do shoddy research again?” asks Jim, deliberately obtuse.   
  
“Huh?” Bones raises his head, fixes his gaze on Jim, and then raises an eyebrow. “You’re saying words.” He says it accusingly, like it’s something Jim should really try harder to refrain from doing.  
  
“A whole sentence,” agrees Jim. “What are you reading?”  
  
“I’m not reading,” says Bones, shortly. It’s his End of Discussion voice, the one that Jim has identified and collated from several previous conversations involving a) the topic of space travel and how Bones is woefully unsuited for it, b) communicable sexual diseases and why people are unanimously stupid if they manage to get one because of how avoidable they are, and c) previous relationships that ended in divorce.   
  
Jim bites his lip. It’s like bait in the water—he knows there’s a hook lurking there, but his impulse control is so poor he can’t help gulping it down anyway and waiting to be torn into.   
  
“Then what are you doing?” Jim keeps his voice carefully neutral only through great expenditure of effort.   
  
Bones peers at Jim over the top of his PADD, scanning warily for suspicious motive and evidently coming up empty. His gaze flickers back down to the PADD, and he mouths something rude, tapping hard at the screen.   
  
And then, in a moment that can only be described as monumentally epic, Bones’s eyes widen, and suddenly he’s ranting, his voice steadily rising in volume. “What the ever-loving fuck is  _this_  fresh new hell?! I swear, they think if they make it look like a dick, people will come suck on it!” Then Bones, PADD clenched in white-knuckled fists, stomps noisily into the bathroom.   
  
When Jim goes to brush his teeth that night, he finds a PADD stuffed mercilessly into the toilet.   
  


oOo

  
  
Jim decides the only thing to be done is to steal one of Bones’s PADDs.   
  
He tries to salvage the one that suffered death-by-toilet, but it’s water-logged and even after he disinfects it and dries it out, it only makes a sad, broken little noise, valiantly attempts to start up, and then whines once before dying. The rest is silence.   
  
The only PADD that’s available to him, though, is the one that Bones has in his hands right this second, so he decides, after intensive consideration, that a physical intervention is his only option.  
  
Bones is, once again, in his customary position sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed. Jim thinks about tackling him from behind, but overall it’s a crap idea because he just knows he’s going to end up bringing them crashing to the floor, and Bones will probably kill him later in his sleep. And since Bones is basically blind and deaf to the world when he’s being brainwashed by his top-secret PADD of secret-y secrets, Jim creeps up directly in front of him, crouches at the foot of the bed, yells, “ _GERONIMO_!” and then takes a flying leap.   
  
He sees things in still-images as he moves in slow motion through the air:  
  


> • Bones’s eyes, wide and startled  
>  • The PADD winging up toward the ceiling  
>  • Bones throwing his arms up to protect his face

  
  
And then time resumes regular speed, Jim hits Bones in the midsection like a bag full of steaks, and they tumble together to the head of the bed, landing in a tangled heap on the pillows.   
  
The PADD falls on Jim’s crotch.   
  
“Goddammit, kid,” mutters Bones, defeated, from where he’s sprawled out on his back, eyes stubbornly closed. “I didn’t get a chance to save.”  
  
When Jim picks up the PADD, the words  _game over_  flash at him vindictively.  
  
“Huh,” he says, raising an eyebrow.   
  


oOo

  
  
Now that he knows what to look for, it’s kind of painfully obvious that Bones is apparently a massive video game nerd. Jim discovers games hidden away in every single electronic device in the dorm—there are downloaded ROMs on most of the PADDs, including several of Jim’s, mostly of strange little turn-based role-playing games, as well as more linear adventure-based games, while the vidscreen hard-drive is full of a small collection of first- and third-person shooters called things like  _Half-Life 2_  and  _Mass Effect_.   
  
Bones seems to favour things he can put on his PADD, though, presumably because he can carry them around with him and play where no one (read: Jim) will bother him, namely, in the bathroom or, on one memorable occasion, in the closet.   
  
“What the fuck is this,” says Jim. He likes to drape himself over Bones like a blanket because it usually means Bones can’t easily maul him. “No, seriously, what. The fuck.”  
  
Bones has no respect for the natural laws of the universe. He’s perfectly aware that Jim is staring right at the little screen where he is currently in serious grips with some sort of grotesque pink bloated creature, yet his response is still a snapped, “What are you talking about, Jim? Shut up.”  
  
“That,” says Jim, reaching over Bones’s shoulder to point at the epic battle taking place. Bones irritably shoves his hand away, then taps the touch-screen with a stylus and instantly KOs his opponent. “The thing we’re both staring at on the screen. What is it?”  
  
“Nothing,” grunts Bones, and gives his entire body a shake, dislodging Jim as though he’s nothing more than a stubborn cluster of burrs.   
  
There’s nothing for it.   
  
Jim climbs into Bones’s lap and snatches the PADD right out of his hands.   
  
“Jim!” cries Bones, distraught. “Jim, don’t you fucking touch—”  
  
Jim rolls off Bones onto the bed and starts pressing buttons. “Whoa, hey, new monster thing. What does this one do? It’s yellow.”  
  
“Stop it!” yelps Bones. He reaches out for the PADD and Jim puts a hand on his forehead, holding him out of arm’s reach. “Seriously, Jim, you can’t—it’s electric type, it’s useless against the—you’re going to—I  _haven’t saved_!”  
  
“No, chill, I totally think I’m getting the hang of this,” says Jim intently. The yellow creature faints, quickly followed by three other weird primary-colour shaded animals. “How many of these do you get?”  
  
“What?” demands Bones, startled. “Six! There are six—are you knocking out my entire fucking team?! Jim, I spent the last forty-five minutes building up to that battle, if you KO my team, I have to start all over again—”  
  
“Oops,” says Jim, scratching his head. “The screen went black.”  
  
Bones makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat that sounds a lot like abject misery in concentrated form.  
  


oOo

  
  
Jim downloads every single data file he can find on 20th century gaming.   
  
Bones has the most eclectic collection of titles—games from every genre, directed at every possible age-group. Jim catches him playing  _The Legend of Zelda_  during an ethics class, which is the first time Jim has ever seen so many visible pixels in his entire life, and then there’s the bewildering and hilarious addiction to  _Pokémon_ , as well as his tendency to indulge in  _Sonic the Hedgehog_  and  _Super Mario_. He plays  _Tetris_  and  _Mahjong_  compulsively, and, now that his secret is out, has begun playing the vast arsenal of FPS games on their shared vidscreen in plain sight of Jim. There are also point-and-click adventures, which Jim can watch Bones play for hours, and RPGs, which Jim cannot.   
  
“So there’s attack, defense, special attack, special defense, and speed,” recites Jim.  
  
“And hit points,” mutters Bones, reluctantly.   
  
“Right. And battling other Pokémon ups all of those categories, but to different degrees.”  
  
“Experience,” sighs Bones, studiously not looking at Jim. Jim’s come to the conclusion that despite knowing practically everything there is to know about this game, Bones hates talking about it. Probably because the game is marketed toward ten-years-olds and their manic desire to collect things, but Jim learned the hard way not to mention that around Bones. Hey, he ain’t judging. Respect.  
  
“So what are you doing right now?”  
  
There’s a thick pause. “Level grinding.”  
  
“Right. I know what both of those words mean, but I’m having trouble combining them in a way that makes sense.”  
  
“Gaining experience raises the level of a Pokémon. There are 100 levels.”  
  
Jim just stares. “Are you serious? You fight other little monsters, over and over and over again, to gain experience to go up in level, in order to...fight  _more_  little monsters? When does it end?”  
  
“When I get bored,” growls Bones, steps away from losing his patience.   
  
“You’re grinding to get to that final boss fight thing, right?”  
  
“Ostensibly,” admits Bones, with considerable reluctance.   
  
“Why don’t you just...cheat? There’ve gotta be codes for that thing.”  
  
Bones actually spares him a glance, finally deigning to raise his gaze and meet Jim’s eyes. He hits him with a pained, semi-pitying look. “Where would the fun be there?”  
  
“I don’t see where the fun is  _now_ ,” protests Jim.   
  
“You don’t understand,” scowls Bones. “I hate codes. Ruins the game. Jumping to the end means you miss out on the actual  _game_  part of the fucking game.”  
  
Jim sighs, settles down on a pillow and stares at the team of Pokémon he’s picked out. He’s got no idea what they are, or what “type” they have; he’s picked them based on the strict criteria of  _does this thing look like a BAMF?_  He’s not exactly surprised by how quickly and mercilessly the first trainer he runs across takes him out, but his dignity feels a little bruised. A game targeted at small children is besting him, and besting him with gratuitous ease.  
  
“I hate this,” he announces after ten minutes. The urge to fling the PADD across the room is strong. Suddenly, he understands why Bones rage-quits so often.  
  
“Shut up,” mutters Bones. “I’m trading with Jo.”  
  
Jo. Joanna McCoy. Mini-McCoy. Bones’s daughter.   
  
Suddenly, the whole Pokémon thing makes a bit more sense.  
  


oOo

  
  
“So do you play them to get closer to Joanna?” asks Jim, apropos of nothing. Bones is in the library, curled up in I-am-saving-the-world repose, leisurely cutting through swathes of Hyrule’s finest castle guards.   
  
Bones glances up at him in that eerie way he has when only his eyeballs swivel up to track Jim while the rest of his body remains utterly still. There are five recyclable coffee cups scattered around him in various states of consumption, as well as a stack of flimsy acetate sheets, a second PADD, and a container full of half-eaten noodles in flagrant disregard of the library’s NO FOOD EVER WE ARE TOTALLY SERIOUS policy. He stares at Jim for a few seconds and then turns his attention back to the game.   
  
“Do I play what?” he says flatly, stubbornly mired in denial.   
  
“Games,” presses Jim, sitting down on the table and swinging his feet between Bones’s spread legs. “Is it, like, a bonding thing?”  
  
Bones sighs, huffing in that slumpy-shouldered defeatist way that usually means Jim is actually going to get a real answer to one of his invasive personal questions.   
  
“Pokémon is her fault. But, dammit, Jim, what’s the deal? I've been playing most of these games since I was a kid. Old habits die hard. It’s relaxin'. Don’t usually play so much, but this whole year’s been an exercise in pushing my boundaries and extending my comfort zone farther’n I’d like.”  
  
Well, shit. Drawly, caffeinated, verbose Bones. Jackpot.   
  
“Are you  _high_?” he demands. Drawly, caffeinated, verbose Bones may be akin to triple cherries in a fruit machine, but it sure as fuck isn’t natural.   
  
“I’m not  _not_  high,” mutters Bones, eyebrows knitting into their standard frown.   
  
“Fair enough. So, you, like, didn’t play outside? Running around in the picturesque Georgian countryside, rolling in the grass, jumping off tire swings into ye olde swimming hole?”  
  
“Sure, all while dying of heatstroke,” says Bones. “Don’t much go out in summer. I’d sit in the attic with a PADD like a non-insane person, reading, and playing whatever when I got bored.”  
  
“You’re a total nerd,” says Jim, in evident surprise.  
  
“I’ll call the police in the minute,” retorts Bones. “Fucking Turtle Rock, I swear to god if I have to hit another fucking crystal switch— _die in a fire_ , you piece of shit temple.”  
  
“I miss the days when I could make sense of the conglomerate of words masquerading as sentences that tumble out of your mouth,” says Jim wistfully.   
  
“And I miss having my own room and a bathroom door that locked, but you don’t see me complainin’,” retorts Bones.  
  
“ _Much_.”  
  


oOo

  
  
“Here,” says Bones, holding a data chip out to Jim. He’s wearing a scowl on his face that translates to shy embarrassment veiled almost entirely by feigned irritation.   
  
“What is this?” says Jim, in mock surprise. He puts a hand on his chest, and fans his face like a Victorian lady. “A present? Did you get me porn, Bones? Why, however did you know?”  
  
Bones rolls his eyes. “Just take it, smartass. I picked a game for you. Something you’ll actually like.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Just take it, goddammit.”  
  
It’s called  _Portal_. The only weapon in the game is a gun that, fittingly, fires portals into the walls. Jim immediately uses his amazing new powers to create a loop that flings the character out one portal and directly into the other in a never-ending, self-sustaining cycle of awesome.  
  
“This is amazing," says Jim, in awe.   
  
“Thought you might like it,” mumbles Bones, from his position sprawled out on the couch next to Jim. He may or may not be high again; Jim isn’t exactly sure. Jim is too busy flinging himself through walls to care.   
  
He finishes the game in three hours.   
  
“What’s next?” he asks, sitting back. The controller had taken some getting used to, especially when Bones outright laughed in his face for tilting the fucking thing along with his on-screen movements, but it felt comfortable to hold, and gave him an immensely satisfying sense of power and control.   
  
Bones snorts. He looks faintly smug, like he knew this was going to happen. “I knew  _Portal_  would be your gateway game.  _Half Life 2_.”  
  
“What happened to the first  _Half Life_?”  
  
“Not worth it,” says Bones, shaking his head. “Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman.”  
  
Jim raises an eyebrow. “You’re high again.”  
  
Bones hits him in the head with the second controller.   
  
Having things bounced off his skull isn’t exactly a new experience for Jim. He pauses, sets his own controller aside, spine compressing like a cat ready to pounce, and throws himself at Bones, arms spread wide. He envelopes him in the kind of hug that goes on longer than is socially appropriate.  
  
“One of these days,” pants Bones, squirming against Jim in an insanely appealing way, “One of these days, I’ll report you for sexual harassment.”  
  
“And I’ll report you for verbal and physical abuse,” says Jim, cheerfully. The longer the hug goes on, the less it resembles hugging and the more it begins to resemble homoerotic wrestling. Bones wriggles like an eel and plays dirty with elbows and knees. The whole scrap doesn’t last very long. Bones flips them off the couch and they land with an  _oof_ , legs tangled, uniforms wrinkled and askew.   
  
“This is only just a little awkward,” says Bones. He’s got his arms around Jim still, and their hips are parallel, slotted together snugly.  
  
“I could get an erection,” offers Jim. “And ramp up the embarrassment.”  
  
“Taking one for the team,” replies Bones. “Admirable.” His hand drifts into Jim’s hair, stroking absently.   
  
“Or you could pet my head,” says Jim, blinking up at Bones in bemusement.  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“This is kind of nice.”  
  
“I’m glad you think so.”  
  
“I’m probably going to kiss you in just a second,” says Jim.  
  
Bones  _hmm_ s under his breath, his fingers still tickling through Jim’s hair, and then his grip tightens and he hauls him up his body, Jim scrabbling to move with him because he’s about to lose handfuls of his hair.   
  
“How about now?” murmurs Bones, eyes lazy and half-lidded and expression relaxed, before tugging again on Jim’s hair and bringing their mouths together.   
  
“Now’s good too,” says Jim breathlessly, against his lips. He tangles his fingers in Bones’s shirt, and sighs, closing his eyes.  
  
“Thought so.”

  
***

_Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye._

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_Are you still there?_  



End file.
